


You had it coming

by Darkhymns



Category: Tales of Crestoria
Genre: Angst, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Guilt, Internal Conflict, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, not much comfort happening, possibly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:14:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25837090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkhymns/pseuds/Darkhymns
Summary: "Useless boy, newly-turned eighteen, with barely a gald to his name now, and all he had left was a Stain over his heart. Not even broken, but diseased."
Relationships: Aegis Alver/Queen Rebecca, Aegis Alver/Vicious
Comments: 8
Kudos: 51





	You had it coming

**Author's Note:**

> Taking a lot of liberty with things but there's only like 5 chapters out so please forgive me on that.

It is said that a knight must protect his lady. But Aegis simply listened as best as he could.

And besides, she was not his lady.

The Queen could not leave her chambers for very long, even if it was with Aegis, so proper and upright. For he was the very same knight who trained so early in the morning, his spear work unparalleled to many except for the curved sword of Leon’s. But even the palace could get cold and dark, filled with guards who went lax in their duty, and whom Aegis would not reprimand until the very next day. Although lately, that had barely been an issue.

“You will listen to me blather the whole night through?” she had asked once. She had been seated at a small dining table, placed near one of the great stained-glass windows of a small library that she regularly visited. Its depiction of Kasque refracted moonlight through its panels, making it difficult on one to stare at it for very long. Perhaps that had been its very intent.

“I will do whatever it is that you ask of me, Your Highness,” Aegis said, standing at guard, one hand clenched into a fist as he kept it level with his chest, just right over his heart. “If you need to speak whatever is on your mind, I will lend you my very ear.”

“Ah, but Aegis,” she said, and he heard the shifting of her dress. Heavy and laden with jewelries that her king had bestowed her, some of them on the very day that he had made his proposal. “You listen, yet, you will not meet my eye.”

He swallowed. For he was turned away, standing guard as he stared at the door that led to the library’s exit.

“I simply do not wish to disgrace you.” He bowed – not at her, of course, with the direction he was still facing. “I understand it can be painful for one to share their grief like this. As a knight, I will not be privy to your tears, for they are yours and yours alone.”

The sigh could be heard so well in the quiet, the space around them so wide. “And yet… have I ever asked you to turn away?”

At that moment, he did not know what to say. His arm aching as he kept his pose, he stared straight ahead, into the stone walls and the door, its iron handle glinting from the light within the room.

The tales she would tell him of her old home, in the outskirts of Medegal, where the seasons could be so much harsher than in the city with its walls. Aegis had already heard her speak of the crops she had helped grow, the way the dirt would bury within her fingernails, working on her family’s farm. Aegis had not seen her when she first appeared at the palace, but it was said, through whispers and frantic gossip that Aegis immediately punished anyone for spreading, that she had still been wearing her brown smock from working in the fields, her burnished hair in disarray, but her eyes as bright as the many rings the King wore.

Aegis had only seen her as his proper Queen, a woman who occasionally missed her home, even if it was in the poorer stretches of the kingdom.

“It is not proper,” he simply said. After all his training, his studying, his devotion, he should know something as simple and straightforward as this.

There were times that he had heard her weep, and it was at such times he would do all he could to keep his fight-or-flight responses down. How shameful it would be of him to leave her at her most vulnerable!

Thankfully, she was not weeping now. But… again, that soft sigh that pulled through the night.

“As your Queen, Sir Alver, I could order you to look at me, through times like these.” There was a sternness to her tone. It was very becoming of her, he thought. “That it would be your knightly duty to help comfort me as proper, when your Queen suffers.”

Of course that was true. Aegis cleared her throat, his polished shoes shifting on the marble floor. “I apologize, Your Highness. Then I will simply-”

“But I am not asking as your Queen, Aegis,” she whispered, stopping him in mid-turn. “I am asking as your friend.”

The doubt festered in him like stage-fright. He tried to not let it leak through his voice. “But, our stations…”

“And all this time, I have called you by your name!” She laughed, and it was then he was weak and finally turned to her. His Queen was still seated, hands placed on her lap, one curled over the other. Stained glass around her, the moonlight making it shimmer, so much so that she didn’t even seem real for that one moment.

Aegis could believe those who could not understand her beauty, how it must have shone through the mud and grime on her first day in Medegal.

“Could you humor me, dear Aegis, and call me by my own?”

Queen Rebecca would not blame him when he stated he must be at his knights’ quarters, before the hour ran too late. She would not blame him when he delegated another trusted soldier to walk her back to her chambers, separate from the King’s.

She would not blame her knight for anything.

* * *

These sinners had their very own Nation, and all that they would do was fish, cook, and mend their wooden boardwalks that extended over the tempestuous river that they had made their home.

Aegis was not the only one to be shocked.

“And you all call yourselves  _ transgressors?!” _ Vicious had kicked away at a crate full of dead fish, the stink carried heavily in the wind that brought it straight to Aegis’ nose, even as far away as he was. He covered his mouth while a man went to the cargo and tried to retrieve before some flopped straight back into the river.

“Hey! What’s your problem?! This is dinner for tonight!”

“Unless those are man-eating piranhas, you shouldn’t be wasting your time with it!” Vicious scoffed, glaring at the man as if he had personally just knifed him in the chest without even a warning. No one had ever looked so out of place than he did, even in a city full of what was supposed to be his fellow ne’er do wells. Black hair, streaked with red, seemed to rush from his head like fast-moving tar. “What were you even guilty of? Sitting your ass on the toilet too long before your wife called the Enforcers on ya?”

“The hell? I don’t even have a wife!”

“Blah blah,  _ whatever.” _ The Great Transgressor gave a great sigh, as if it pulled down his very bones to sink into the water. “I feel too depressed to even drink.”

Aegis just wanted to be away from it all. To be sitting in a den full of transgressors who had evaded punishment, to have had to disobey his very oath as a knight, to his king and to his-

A sharp pain in his chest.  _ I can’t think back to that. _

Seated near the edge of a stall, seemingly abandoned, Aegis had evaded much of Kanata’s frustrating attempts at being so-called comrades and was even grateful to the clearly deranged girl he was with to drag him away. He had no escape, unless he could merely just swim out of here, but he knew it would be no easy feat, not with whatever means they had done to get into the Nation of Sin in the first place.

He shifted back, heard the clinking of glass suddenly. He turned to find a crate full of colored bottles. Alcohol? Does this so-called Nation also have a brewery? Such petty sins would indeed make sense to them. He only reached forward to see just what exact quality it contained-

“Hey! Gimme that!” Vicious knocked Aegis roughly aside to the boardwalk, snatching the bottle from his head. “Hehehe, finally!”

“E-Excuse me!” Aegis shouted, his balance completely ruined as he struggled to at least sit back up with some form of decorum.

“What? You wantin’ some, knighty boy?” Vicious grinned, shaking the bottle by its neck at Aegis. “That’s not against your moral code? Actually, you even old enough?” A cackle. “Either way, I get first sips.”

“That is _ not _ the issue!” Although, drinking alcohol so ruthlessly, without any regard to responsibility, was an issue all on its own, but that wasn’t the point!

The Great Transgressor took a swig, head back, one hand on his bare hip. It was like he showed off that Stain of Guilt of his so gleefully, imprinted over his navel and carved deep into the flesh like a brand. 

When it came to transgressors,  _ this _ was what Aegis pictured. One who showed no remorse, no sympathy, and paraded around their sins like a banner. Nothing like the people who lived here, their own brands like unassuming tattoos.

Meanwhile, Aegis’ own still burned underneath his vest. To think he could be in the same category as-

Vicious grimaced just then, followed by a sputter straight into Aegis’ face who took the frontal assault of the spray of alcohol that the Great Trangressor spat out. “Ugh! This stuff’s weak!”

“Y-You-! How could you-?!” Aegis stuttered, wiping away at his brow in pure disgust.

Vicious glanced to the ex-knight. “Oh, still here?” A low laugh that traveled through the chest. “If you wanted to share, you should have just said! You can have the rest of it. Seems perfect for your type.” He tossed the bottle at him with all the effort of a bored bartender.

Aegis only barely caught it in time, tipping up the head accidentally to have it soak through his uniform. “I, I didn’t want this!”

“No need to thank me!” Vicious grinned before bending down, hands at his hips. That searing grin, too close, and Aegis once again lost his composure and flinched back. “But if you’re gonna drink your sorrows away for lost love, you should just get it over with.”

Aegis was silent, only hearing the swaying of the water at the docks, thick and overbearing. A fist tightened over the bottle.

“Ah, not gonna admit it still? Fine, fine.” From how close he was, his Stain of Guilt continued to burn within the sunlight. It was hard to look away, despite the disgust building within Aegis like a sickness. That was what it was. That was it. “You’d probably fit in with the rest of these nobodies then. Such a pisswater place…”

“I am not…one of them,” Aegis blurted out, but with hesitance still.  _ And…yet… _

The smile on Vicious was stinging, not like a dagger, but something worse. It could still draw so much blood all the same. “That’s not what the good people think,” he said. He lifted up his hand, thumb and forefinger out as he pointed it at Aegis’ face. “Show them a different angle, and they turn on you faster than you can fucking blink.”

Aegis was not sure why Vicious was talking with him, or why he was letting him be this close. Still, the water sloshed beneath them, rushing against the wood of the docks. “And that is the same with you?” he challenged. “Your reputation isn’t deserved?”

“Ha! Nah, it’s deserved very much. But you know, people still don’t get things right, and that gets a little frustrating after a few years.” Vicious’ grin was just a permanent fixture on his face, like a crack made within stone. “People are still fucking cowards in the end, but you know that.”

It didn’t mean anything, and it shouldn’t have set something awful in Aegis’ throat, the bottle still held in his hand. But before he could say anything back, Vicious stood up, already giving a wave.

“See ya! Make sure to take in slow sips. Don’t wanna get those hiccups.” And the darkness that was him moved, but still Aegis kept feeling the shadows shift. 

Still, he couldn’t escape it.

* * *

The Queen had specifically requested for him, he was told.

“She sounded distressed,” spoke one of his knights, head slightly inclined, his eyes half-covered by the helm he wore. Many of his men were obedient, letting little sway them, but he could admit that at times, it unnerved him, that obediency. But that only meant he had more to learn and strive for.

“I will go to her then,” he reassured. After traveling to the palace, passing underneath the painted windows, Kasque looking down on all, Aegis was soon at the door to the Queen’s chambers. Plush carpet of the hallways softened his footsteps, but the occasional clang of his spear echoed within the confined space.

“Aegis…” he heard his Queen call out, before he had even knocked and announced himself.

“I apologize, Your Highness. I hope I haven’t frightened you. I heard you have been unwell?” Aegis cleared his throat, the hallways particularly dark as he set his spear against the wall.

“Please…help me…”

The voice was weak and pleading. The disturbance moved him to further action. “Your Highness!” Just a moment of hesitance before he reached for the handle to the door, pushing inward. Already unlocked, he noted. The room inside was so dark. What if the Queen had been attacked? Was her intruder still here? “Are you injured? Hold on!"

He moved fast and impulsively, nearly tripping over a bundle of clothes from what he could see in the hallway light. But there was no body within them...

“Aegis.” Always calling him by his name, despite their stations. Her voice was nearer. He raised his head.

They said that the Queen’s beauty was unparalleled, for that is why the King had sought her. Raised in mud and toil, she would no longer be held down by such lowly things anymore. The King had raised her up so that she could be more befitting a role that fit her appearances.

Aegis’ eyes adjusted to the dark to find the Queen standing before him, her form completely bare. She no longer even wore her crown, her hair falling along her shoulders in waves, as dark as the earth she must have dug through for her family’s farm.

He had no idea what was happening.

“Your…Highness?”

She shook her head, a rapturous smile on her face. “Please… even now… you won’t call me by my name?”

He did not understand. His mouth was as dry as the summer air outside.

“I suppose it is hard to break old habits…” She walked forward. By then his eyes continued to betray him, roaming across a form that only the King should be allowed to witness. “Aegis…” her whisper, sliding through his head.

When she reached out for him, a hand brushing against his immaculate vest, trying to unearth a button from its clasp, it was like a spell had been broken. So close, she seemed as unreal as the figure in the palace’s stained-glass windows.

“Your Highness!” he shouted, taking a step back. He had nearly tripped over the clothes ( _ her clothes?! _ ) that still lay in a heap on a floor, like discarded rubble decorated in golden filigree. “Wh- I-I don’t… You’re not dressed!”

A curious look passed through her eyes. Still, the hallway light just barely touched her, gliding over thighs and the shadow of breasts. “Yes… It is for you, Aegis.”

“I don’t-! You…are not well. A…. a doctor, I will get a doctor-” And as Aegis turned, he felt a hand, like steel, root him to the floor.

“Why? Why do you still refuse me? You desire me, don’t you?”

His shivering was enough to send his breathing into erratic patterns. He could barely think. “Your Highness, you are unwell.” And like a fool, he faced her again, met with eyes that felt so sharp. He instinctively covered his vision orb with his free hand, shutting it away as best he could. “You are distraught… You are not yourself-”

“I am more myself than I have ever been!” Her voice was raised, just enough to stun him, to let her continue. “Why don’t you let yourself do the same?” Another step forward. Her other hand reaching to stroke his cheek, his hair.

Still, he could only say, “Your Highness…”

“Even now, I can tell you want me. Please, Aegis. Please, look at me…”

She was going to kiss him.

The panic took hold of his body like a parasite. He gripped her shoulder and shoved her back, just enough so that he could breathe. “Your Highness, I’m sorry, you are unwell, I’m…”

He was not brave enough. He rushed out of her chambers and slammed shut the door. The spear he had left to stand by the right wall waited for him.

Hands clenched around its smooth surface. He would not be privy to her weeping.

* * *

When Aegis had weathered through grueling tests for the knighthood, his parent’s gald that he carried to Medegal quickly running dry, he knew that to waste such effort and possibility would be the greatest tragedy. It quickly became about focus, about drive, about  _ morality. _

He had let her die right in front of him.

The Enforcer was not human, a being cloaked in white, hood covering a face that did not exist. He could feel the thrum of energy that made up its existence. The people cried out for justice, and thus an Enforcer was born, ready to carry out its one sole purpose. Even so, Aegis tried to look into its face, tried to see if it held anything else within it.

He heard the rapid footsteps of the man he had saved, moving away. Aegis lowered his spear. It felt too heavy, along with the Stain of Guilt on his chest. “Just do it,” he muttered, knowing the Enforcer would not hear him. It would not need to. It would do what it was meant to do, pushed on by the will of the people. They wanted him to die.

The gunshot had felt like it had been right next to his head, blasting his eardrum, making his head ring. The Enforcer’s cloak billowed, light streaming, a cry that was once again not human, leaking into the air.

“You just gonna continue being dead weight?”

Aegis was clutching his left ear, glaring at Vicious. But the Great Transgressor wasn’t smiling now. The expression was foreign on someone like this, who was boisterous and reveled greatly in his heinous existence. One of his strange weapons was slung over his right shoulder, finger just hovering over the trigger.

“Should have left you back in those tunnels if that were the case, eh, big-shot knight?”

His headache was already dimming, but his anger was mounting. With a growl, Aegis grabbed what he could of Vicious’ collar. But the man barely wore anything that made sense, so his fingers grasped at sweaty skin and tangled black hair, and only got enough of whatever made up the other’s coat. Only then did the hint of a smirk appear back on Vicious, suspect and calculating.

“You had no right to do that!” He shouted too loudly, so much it scratched the back of his throat. “You don’t get to decide!”

“You types shouldn’t get to decide for others either, yet here we are… Bit of a tragedy, isn’t it?” Vicious tapped the edge of his gun to Aegis’ chin, lifting it, the upturned bit of it pricking his skin. He could feel the heat from it, still brimming with whatever ammo was used for its chamber. “I told ya to drink your sorrows away. Not to let it eat you up inside until there’s nothing left.”

“You don’t  _ know. _ ” Aegis could still feel the warmth of her blood in his hands. It didn’t help that Vicious was warm too, the heat radiating off him like a bonfire. The laughter that had rung out before, followed by terrible bangs in the air that sent off each heartbeat in Aegis shuddering. “I have no more purpose…Not after that.”

He swallowed, feeling the solidness of the gun, how it pointed directly to his throat. He nearly wished Vicious would just shoot him right here and get it over with. Let it be over.

“Your purpose is what you choose, you fucking idiot.” The guns dissolved into red mist, taking away its hint of a promise. Aegis gritted his teeth. “You wanna own your sin? Make something of it worthwhile? Or let it own you and die without even a struggle?”

Aegis didn’t know how to answer. His fingers still kept their grip on Vicious’ collar, or his neck, his hair. He wasn’t sure. But whatever had made him rush to save everyone living here, it wasn’t something he could ignore, even with the pain.

Vicious finally grinned, inclining his head just a few inches. “Or is this your way of wanting to kiss me?”

It was like a bucket of cold water had been dumped on his head. “Wh- I’m not-!” Aegis immediately let go of Vicious, who only cackled. “What the hell is wrong with you?!”

“Hey, I didn’t hear a 'no' there,” and more laughter spilled through Vicious’ words. It was infuriating, even as something else morphed into his hands. Something red but chaotic, it moved like something living, erratic in its pace. Not like the Enforcer’s light that simply pulsed like an electrical lamp. “But if you wanna have fun, now’s not the time. You gotta own up to what you are. No escaping that.” A sharp grin. “Believe me.”

Even through everything, Aegis felt the drive in him to protect.  _ But you didn’t protect her, _ came the thought, dark and all around him. Or was that just Vicious, close to him again, his sin engulfing all who stood too close.

Aegis couldn’t remember agreeing, but he must have, for whatever Vicious stabbed through him shifted through his blood. It set fire to his heart, where the Stain hovered over, despite all that he could do to cover it up.

And as Vicious let whatever manifestation of sin rush through him, Aegis couldn’t help but think that this must have been what Rebecca had felt, her eyes fixated on him as the sword came down.

Why was pain the only thing that connected them both?

* * *

“I must apologize to you, Sir Alver.”

Aegis was part of a retinue with the Queen, their march echoing across the stone streets of Medegal. “I’m afraid I do not know what you mean, Your Highness. We are only a little further until the capital building.”

The knights of the retinue didn’t physically respond to the Queen’s question. They didn’t respond to much of anything. Perfect soldiers, obedient to a fault. Aegis would quell down his uneasiness. As long as they did their job of protecting her, professing their loyalty to the end, it did not matter.

Still, he saw the Queen’s uneasiness, but he had to keep his gaze forward. Looking back, he would be assaulted with images he had no right of knowing.

“I was not acting proper with you. It is just,” she said before she took a pause. The circle of guards were around them both, but they felt so far away, as if they were simply a wall of armor. “Perhaps I had misjudged?”

Aegis felt the panic begin to seep through. Why here? Why now? Did she not understand where they both were? “It is through no fault of your own.” He saw the citadel of the building once they turned a corner. “This way.”

“But you have always looked at me, Aegis. Is it not what you want?”

Her words made his heart stop, despite the lively throng of city folk around them. He was a frightened animal trapped within a corner, with a hot torch being held to his face. He couldn’t face this. “Your Highness-“

“Stop running away from your feelings!”

He finally turned and-

-she was on the ground. The sword was lodged into her stomach, one of her loyal knights standing over her with a blank expression on his face, eyes hidden away by the void of his helmet.

Her crown was scattered to the other side, pushed against the wall of the tunnels. Dark here except for the torches that lined the way. The air was musty, kept within for years, of dust, of cobwebs. He couldn’t breathe.

The spear he held was dangled in his hand, useless.

“Aegis…please tell me…”

He tried to rush to her side, but a hand stopped him. It was hard and powerful, and the fingers dug into his skin like knives. He only barely stopped himself from crying out.

“Stop. There’s nothing you can do for her now.”

Vicious, rooting him to the ground, keeping him upright. He was so close to falling.

The hand kept him away from the blood that seeped across the floor like a vastly-forming ocean. No matter how much he struggled, he couldn’t free himself from that grip.  _ (Or are you just not trying hard enough? You never wanted to touch her anyway) _ . Aegis could only watch the Queen’s skin turn pale, such stark contrast to the dark blood around her.

_ (Even now, you can’t even say her name?) _

Useless boy, newly-turned eighteen, with barely a gald to his name now, and all he had left was a Stain over his heart. Not even broken, but diseased.

* * *

“Aegis, slow down!”

Kanata’s whining voice had a tendency to pierce right through, but the knight only continued marching forward. There was already a storm brewing up, and while that might be to their advantage to keep any future Enforcers coming their way, it was best not to take chances. Sinners didn’t get to avoid justice forever, as what had been demonstrated quite vividly back in the Nation of Sin.

He couldn’t save the people there either.

“How you have been able to elude anyone for this long, I’ll never understand,” he shot back. Kanata and Misella were still quite a ways off, with Vicious trailing along. He was always behind them now, like a long and snaking shadow, and Aegis hated how his own eyes always traveled there. It shouldn’t have mattered. The only way was forward if he wasn’t allowed to die.

Aegis didn’t slow, walking more as the thunder rumbled overhead.

“Come on!” Kanata whined again. Out of the corner of his eyes, he caught the boy trying to brush his bangs out of his eyes. “Meakyu can’t even keep up!”

Somehow, it was the mention of the little animal that made him pause. The clouds above him broiled endlessly, endlessly. Aegis clenched his fists, stopping. Just like that, the little animal had skittered right up to his boot, mewling pitifully.

All that they had left, with a name brought on by a young girl’s voracious hunger. He sighed. “We’d need shelter if we’re stopping.”

“Nah, just go lie underneath a tree or something.” And like a ghost, Vicious was right next to him, laying an elbow on his shoulder as if he was a piece of furniture. The way he leaned against him, the way he smiled, a wolf in wolf’s clothing. “Really gets ya in touch with your animal side, right? That’s what me and the kids have been doing.”

“And we’d get splinters every night,” spoke Misella in a monotone, while Kanata tried to calm down little Meakyu with occasional petting.

“Just burn ‘em up! Shouldn’t have to tell ya.”

Aegis took a step away, leaving Vicious’ side, not wanting it. He. Did. Not. Want. It. “I don’t care what any of you decide,” he said. “Do what you want.”

“Hey, knighty boy! Forget you’re one of us? Or did you leave your Blood Sin behind?”

Aegis didn’t answer. He wouldn’t just leave them completely, not when he was stuck, not when he was cast into the role of sinner, of transgressor, of the man who couldn’t even do his one simple task. He only went off to the side, all as the storm continued to build up, the scent of rain in the air.

His chest ached, just over his heart. Did each pulse set the Stain on him shining? He clutched at the vest, wanting to wrench it off. But then he’d have nothing else. Still, his hand remained.

Ever since then, this was all he felt.

He wasn’t sure how far he walked, or if the others wondered where he left to. It was hard to care, even after getting rid of their Enforcers. It was only temporary anyway. They’d be coming after them again, and with the Nation gone, they had no safety at all.

The thunder snapped above him, and Aegis flinched, feeling just the hint of raindrops over his hair.

“Afraid of loud noises?”

The voice made his heart jump  _ (diseased, worthless, but not broken) _ , made him turn to find the so-called Great Transgressor near him. So close that he hadn’t heard his footsteps, but maybe because of the storm.

“I’m not,” he said, realizing his mistake in even answering such a question. He could see it in the way Vicious smiled at him, enough to get his face hot in embarrassment. “What are you doing here?”

“Making sure you don’t, oh, accidentally trip your neck into a makeshift noose around here. Happens all the time in these types of places.” Vicious shook his head, tsked so gently at the very concept. “Gotta watch over you kids.”

“Don’t call me a child!” Aegis shouted, and he hadn’t meant to. But the storm was getting louder, the rain pouring harder. He was only trying to be heard. “I don’t need any of your help.”

“Heh, interesting, since you’ve been needing it since we’ve met.”

Aegis gritted his teeth. The best decision would have been to turn and leave, but no, he had to walk up to Vicious, had to face him again, despite the other’s taller stature. The rain continued to fall, damping that black hair, stitched with red in-between, to fall over his shoulders like a shroud.

“Then  _ don’t _ help me next time! I’ve done fine without you – without any of you! And if you hadn’t been in the city, none of this would have even happened. And Rebecca would have-”

He stopped. The name felt so strange on his tongue, like it wasn’t meant to be held there.

Vicious kept his smile, but it turned unkind, more so as he moved in closer. “Say that again.”

Aegis was tempted to take a step back, but that would be admitting something weak in him, even if he already was. He knew he was weak. “She would have still been alive if….”

A black-gloved hand took his chin. He expected to see a gun pointed at him the very next second, hear the soft hiss of it being summoned from Vicious’ own Blood Sin. The red would engulf his vision, and the last thing he’d see was Vicious’ smile, so close, so close.

“Listen,  _ kid, _ I thought we been over this. I'm not dealing with you and your knights’ little power trips of passing off the blame to the innocent ones, poor little shits that don't know any better. Lucky for you, I ain’t either of those. Still, it’d be kinder if you just stabbed me in the chest instead of trying to push off your guilt onto mine.” The grin looked ready to bite his face off. “I asked you if you were gonna own your sin… So are you gonna add lying to your pretty sin list?”

Aegis was shaking, and the Stain over his heart kept burning. He wondered if his skin would be charred after this, yet the rain kept falling, kept the fires down. “You stopped me from going to her!”

A raised eyebrow. “Only after she was dead.” Closer, and somehow that scent of blood was everywhere. It was inescapable. “Right?”

He didn’t want to think on that, he didn’t  _ want, _ but the hand on his chin held him so tight, made him raise his head to the sky, made the raindrops sting his eyes.

“Let me take a quick fucking guess, you don’t even know if you cared about that woman, did you? Maybe you were using her? Is that it? Using her to make yourself feel all good and righteous and oh so full of  _ justice, _ because that’s what all you knight-types are. You get off on feeling you’re doing good for everyone while you throw some poor sap to the Enforcers just to get eaten alive. Am I getting it?”

“Stop it,” Aegis was pleading, but Vicious kept holding onto him, kept talking.

“The funny thing about all this, you couldn’t even lie to her, huh? Not even a little bit! Oh, but you can lie about everything else!” 

Vicious shoved the other into a tree. His clothes scraped against the bark, but still he kept his gaze forward, into that smile, that smile. “You can lie to the big bad Transgressor for ruining your life, and to yourself for having to deal with all of this. But you couldn’t lie to her for one little second until after she passed on. Cruel bastard.”

Another shift back, Aegis feeling the tree now brushing against his scalp. “Now, if it was me, I’d have given her roses to lay on her deathbed, held her hand ‘till the end, all that romantic crap. Poor woman probably never got half as much.” Narrowed eyes, so sharp. “Or, ya know, I’d just not let her die in the first place-”

Aegis couldn’t see any more, not when he grabbed Vicious’ wrist, wrenched it forwards to bring him close. He tasted salt, and that was all he could taste at first when he clumsily pressed his lips to the other's. Something choked left his throat, but it was drowned out by the thunder. No one could hear him.

He barely left, catching his breath, before Vicious took over again, giddy laughter spilling from him. “Haha, so  _ that’s _ what you’re into!” And then it was Vicious taking his mouth this time, and it was as searing as the sin he had plunged straight into his heart. It made him writhe, made him nearly scream every horrid thing against his teeth and tongue. He could feel the grin over his lips, followed by something that just  _ took. _

_ Please, look at me, _ came the words, and he drowned in it. The rain that fell down too hard, that rushed down his neck, that he could taste between their lips as a tongue moved so deeply through him.

“I’m n-not…like…” he stuttered out, falling back against the tree. It hurt. The kiss bit into him and he only opened his mouth for more of it.

Vicious lived up to his name, at least with the way he touched Aegis, the fingers still biting deep into his chin. Once Aegis’ knees felt weak, letting him slide down the tree, Vicious was over him, leaving him no room to move or breathe, but it wasn’t like he deserved that, now did he?

“You gonna lie about this too?” Vicious challenged, running a tongue over his lips. Voice low, enough to send something shivering through one’s spine but only if they were this close. “I’ll take whatever lies you have left and give it back.”

“What do you even mean by-” Aegis started before there was another kiss, and he wondered then if Vicious would kill him just then. Could he just do it, could he just get rid of this pain except it was only making it worse, kissing him was making it worse and yet Aegis couldn’t stop wanting it. He reached out with his other hand to grip Vicious’ waist, and once again he could barely grasp the coat. Only skin, drenched by the rain.

At some point, he more or less laid on the ground, with the mud coating his once immaculate vest, and Vicious was over him, still holding his chin, still kissing him so hard, and then Aegis felt something press just between his legs. It made him arch up, and only a brief glance caught a knee that was now nudged there, pressing so insistently that only served to confuse Aegis on why it felt this good. Not when everything else burned.

“What is it?” Vicious breathed, and the rain stuck his black hair to his cheeks. It made Aegis stare, captivated, even as part of him knew he should turn away. “Perfect knight, and you never done this before?”

At that, some brief anger. He gripped the waist harder, pulling him down. “I know enough!”

“Oh, so you wanna show me?” And Aegis tried to shut that out, tried to just get lost in whatever this was. If kissing Vicious could just pull him away from himself for even a brief second, if just grinding against him like an animal would do anything at all to make him forget, just make him forget,  _ but her blood was everywhere _ , but he didn’t mean for it to be his fault. He could have just run away like she asked.  _ But I had never thought that, _ or had he? Or was he too stupid to think it beyond anything else?

Vicious was moving so close, his mouth leaving trails of heat that soon pressed into his neck. Teeth that bit into skin and it hurt, but it was different at least. Even as the Stain of Guilt over his chest continued to pulse, faster, as if on a rush of adrenaline.

“Go ahead, knight. Show me already.” The knee Aegis moved against stayed in place. He heard Vicious chuckle. “Unless this is how you like it, when I’m not even doing much.”

But, Vicious was doing this. He was, he can’t lie to him. Aegis shut his eyes and tried to kiss Vicious again, furious in his action, a cracked moan leaving him. The ground felt so damp and slippery, but something within him was feeling too hot to ignore or care, and if he could just get to that place, if he could just get it  _ over with… _

“You trying to forget?” said Vicious, finally letting go of his chin, but now to press his palm over Aegis’ chest, to the place where it still burned inside him so much. “You still won’t own it.”

“Gh!” Aegis felt something shaking, even if Vicious wasn’t doing much like he said,  _ but it can’t just be me. _ Then when something released, making him hot, weighing down his limbs, all as he kept moving against Aegis’ knee until his body shuddered with the unfamiliar, he thought,  _ I’m not like this. _

In that space where his mind hit a blank, when he tried searching for Vicious’ mouth once more, it all happened too much. Not like this, Aegis, Aegis,  _ Aegis at least tell me you love me even if it’s a lie could you just do that- _

In the midst of everything, Aegis pushed Vicious off, letting the rain hit his face. He scrambled back against the tree to lay against. His fingers dug through his hair, grabbing onto what they could.

The pain only felt so much worse.

“Go away!” he shouted, even as he heard Vicious get to his feet. He dared a glance, finding the other already turned away. He barely had a stain on his clothes, the raindrops pattered against his black coat, making it shine.

“Not complaining if you need something to use,” Vicious said. He couldn’t understand that tone. He couldn’t even picture what kind of face Vicious was pulling right now. “But you still need to own to what you did.”

Aegis turned away, gritting his teeth so hard he thought they would break. “Shut up.”

The laughter that followed was almost welcoming. “Well! Can’t say I tried.” He heard him walk away this time, when before he had heard no one come forward at all. “Don’t get lost out here, knight.”

It didn’t matter. He didn’t care. He only hoped the rain would wash everything away. He only hoped that-

_ Even if it’s just a lie, please- _

Aegis stared upwards, and still the rain could soothe nothing in his head. “I’m sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..”

If the other words stalled in his throat, if they were even there to begin with, he still had no way of knowing. Yet he told her, a knight’s every word is a promise.

He never meant to act so kind.


End file.
